Person A

I finished programming several attributes for random characters and came up this output:

Attractiveness: Good Looking

Wealth: Average Wealth

Advantages: High Pain Threshold, Clerical, Empathy, Ambidexterity

Disadvantages: Berserk, Bully, Bad Tempered

Skills: Stealth, Jeweler, Animal Handling, Writing, Bard

Skin Color: White with Freckles

Hair Color: Brown

Eye Color: Gray

Strengths: Adaptability, Signifance, Ideation, Analytical, Relator

Life Events: Crippled, Broken Arm, Marriage, Crippled

Now I realize that using so many gaming terms in my randomization can make things difficult to write about non-gaming scenarios. Ah well. Let's work with what we're given. Looking at the life events this person seems to have eternal bad luck: Crippled twice. This could indicated that they had a crippling accident, was healed, and crippled again in a different way (or the same way, this persons story might involve a 'no such thing as a free lunch' moral, or parallel 'Flowers for Algernon').

The Strengths come from the book "Now, Discover Your Strengths" by Marcus Buckingham and Donald O Clifton. The disadvantages of a gaming source is that it will push me to think of gaming situations (not always bad if this person is in a fantasy story). The disadvantages of the Strengths are that they are geared towards the business world. Some of them seem to fall under the same category, and I will probably reduce the words or come up with new ones. This persons strengths include Adaptability, so perhaps they handled the life changes pretty well. Challenging their adaptability to the limits (say, repeating the same accident that left them crippled) may make a good story. 'Significance' indicates that they want to 'be someone.' This person wants to be valued for who they are, for their life to have meaning. 'Ideation' may be a curse of philosophy. Searching for the core idea underneath things. I'll ignore the other two for now, because the Strengths alone can be used to create a fairly complex person with desires and needs, and I want to explore the rest of it.

The Advantages (ripped from GURPS) tell me that this person might not have known how badly hurt they were in whatever accident crippled them. Clerical in game terms can be replaced with 'active religious life' in some genres. Empathy and Ambidexterity are pretty self explanatory.

The disadvantages are from a RPG, but they fit in various genre's. Unfortunately this persons disadvantages are all along the same line. They're a bully, bad tempered, and if pushed he breaks things. Perhaps they were having a really bad day and caused the crippling accident.

The skills (again ripped from the RPG concepts) indicate some of the things that flavor the character: Stealth could mean that they were very sneaky as a child and now that they are in a walker/wheelchair/cybernetic body augmentation they need to relearn that skill for a particular task. Jeweler tells me that one of the things this person did to help recover from the crippling accident was making jewelry. This could be for two reasons: One, they lost their legs and need to focus on something small and upper body detailed. Two, their arms were crippled an making jewelry was used to help them recover their manual dexterity. Bard is so obviously a gaming term, but I think it can mean something as simple as a musical disposistion. This person sang solos in their church choir.

The physcial descriptions are there to remind me that I have to decsribe characters in my stories. It's one of my faults.

So far I've written a lot of speculation. Later entries won't go this far into the thinking process as I streamline the thinking process. Here's a brief biography of Person A:

As a child, Person A was active in a religious community, performing traditional and original pieces on an instrument that allowed them to stand and sing. They came from an upper middle class family and enjoyed some local popularity. Person A dreamed big dreams of taking their music and message to a larger audience. Person A would have been called a prodigy in their field. While popular with adults, other children did not get along with Person A, who was seen as egotistical and pushed other children around.

On the verge of young adulthood this person was upstaged by an older person who came into their area and Person A was temporarily forgotten.
Person A hatched a plan that involved them sneaking around backstage during a performance and causing their 'enemy' to lose their instrument and reputation. Things when wrong and the sabotage led to an accident that left them unable to walk. This led to a depression that was healed with crafts. They were apprenticed to a jewelry maker and began making jewelry inspired by the religious and musical background that they enjoyed as a child.

Still working with a growing moodiness and bad temper over the 'unfairness of the world' Person A managed to become quite a good craftsperson, but did not recieve the recognition that they expected and saw positive recognition of their work as 'pity the cripple.'

A burst of anger over another round of 'pity the cripple' Person A tried to get violent and managed to break their arm. Now Person A could not perform or create jewelry. Person A suffered from depression and avoiding everyone. Left alone in self-exile, Person A is visited by a soothsayer/councilor and gives person A access to Big Ideas. Person A comes to accept some variation of "When life gives you lemons, steal some sugar and make lemonade."

A healer arrives in Person A's life who can undo the damage done when Person A was crippled in the sabotage activity. Person A regains control of their mood and picks up the musical instrument that they hadn't touched in years. Finding the skills are still there, enhanced by the feeling of new life and rebirth, Person A returns to religious devotion.

By this time Person A is at marriagable age and jumps into the prospect immediately. Feeling the rush of life and joy, if not endless success, of renewed life keeps Person A going for several years until their oldest (or only) child is about ten years old.

Another musician, similar to Person A's prodigy childhood, takes umbrage to poorly chosen words that relfected Person A's childhood ego rather than their joyful life and decided to teach Person A a lesson, much like Person A tried to do. "What comes around goes around." The accident takes the life of thier child and spouse, and breaks the instrument that they'd had all of their life.

Person A is crippled again, back to where they were before the healer intervened. Person A spends the rest of their life bitter and overly critical of musicians.

There are more opportunities for redemption in Person A's life, and I didn't even touch 'empathy' in their life. There are times in this biography where person A may have learned empathy and the rest of their life may have been completely different. They may have been able to avoid the second crippling accident. I also didn't deal with "Animal Handling." Obviously not everything the character generator spits out is useful. The way I created this biography I just didn't find a place for Empathy. The apparent bad luck of their life has driven events. Person A could react in different ways.

A few things that are missing: Name, gender, world, etc. I've kept it generic so I could plug this person into a story at any time in their life into any genre. The instrument person A plays could be a lyre, harp-guitar, or electronic zither. The religous devotion could be to some local patron Saint, some god, famous ancestor, or the monotheistic God of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. The accident could take place on a small wooden stage in a courtyard or a 40,000 seat arena. The healer could be magical or scientific. Details can be adapted to any genre.

So there is Person A. Future biographies probably won't have all of the background thinking process that I've shown here.